capital of British North America.  Toronto had reached 60,000, and was making more steady progress in population and wealth than any other city, except Montreal.  Towns and villages were springing up with great rapidity in the midst of the enterprising farming population of the western province.  In Lower Canada the townships showed the energy of a British people, but the habitants pursued the even tenor of ways which did not include enterprise and improved methods of agriculture.

The value of the total exports and imports of the provinces reached $150,000,000 by 1864, or an increase of $100,000,000 in a quarter of a century.  The great bulk of the import trade was with Great Britain and the United States, but the value of the exports to the United States was largely in excess of the goods purchased by Great Britain—­especially after 1854, when Lord Elgin arranged a reciprocity treaty with the United States.  Lord Elgin represented Great Britain in the negotiations at Washington, and the Congress of the United States and the several legislatures of the Canadian provinces passed the legislation necessary to give effect to the treaty.  Its most important provisions established free trade between British North America and the United States in products of the forest, mine, and sea, conceded the navigation of the St. Lawrence to the Americans, and the use of the canals of Canada on the same terms as were imposed upon British subjects, gave Canadians the right to navigate Lake Michigan, and allowed the fishermen of the United States to fish on the sea-coasts of the British provinces without regard to distance from the shore, in return for a similar but relatively worthless privilege on the eastern shores of the republic, north of the 30th parallel of north latitude.  During the thirteen years the treaty lasted the trade between the two countries rose from over thirty-three million dollars in 1854 to over eighty million dollars in 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States government itself, for reasons which I shall explain in a later chapter.

The navigation of the St. Lawrence was now made continuous and secure by the enlargement of the Welland and Lachine canals, and the construction of the Cornwall, Williamsburgh, and Beauharnois canals.  Railways received their great stimulus during the government of Sir Francis Hincks, who largely increased the debt of Canada by guaranteeing in 1852 the bonds of the Grand Trunk Railway—­a noble, national work, now extending from Quebec to Lake Michigan, with branches in every direction, but whose early history was marred by jobbery and mismanagement, which not only ruined or crippled many of the original shareholders, but cost Canada eventually twenty-three million dollars.  In 1864 there were two thousand miles of railway working in British North America, of which the Grand Trunk Railway owned at least one-half.  The railways in the maritime provinces were very insignificant, and all attempts to obtain the co-operation of the imperial and Canadian governments for the construction of an Intercolonial Railway through British American territory failed, despite the energetic efforts of Mr. Howe to bring it about.